'Pain make man think. Thought make man wise. Wisdom make life endurable' : Sakini, in "The Tea House of the August Moon" by John Patrick, (1953)

Monday, May 28, 2018

Bihar’s new sorrow Nitish Kumar’s prohibition policy is visiting pain on those it was supposed to help

While Bihar Chief
Minister Nitish
Kumar portrays the lower castes as the primary beneficiaries of
prohibition, the figures of jail occupancy tell exactly the opposite story. Two
years after the policy was introduced, an investigation in this paper has
revealed, a disproportionately high proportion of OBCs, SCs and STs is behind
bars on charges related to liquor. STs constitute only 1.3 per cent of the
state’s population, but more than five times that figure have been arrested.
One in four of Bihar’s citizens are OBCs, but over one-third of those cooling
their heels in jail are from that category.

The pattern is sustained across all
of the backward and depressed castes, who appear to have borne the brunt of
prohibition. Ironically, about 80 per cent of those arrested were regular
drinkers or alcoholics. Meanwhile, the liquor mafias, which should have been
targeted as a priority, appear to have been spared the attention of the law.
Internationally, the enforcement of prohibition has focused on cutting off
supply. Punishing consumers has generally been a secondary priority.

The data, drawn fom 21
jails and sub-jails under three circles in Bihar, was apparently compiled to
map drinking habits to caste and socio-economic indicators. However, there are
obvious fallacies at work here. It is easier for the police to sweep a dragnet
through poor areas, and the catch will be reliably bigger than similar raids on
more prosperous zones. Besides, the poor are more vulnerable to police action
and may not have the capacity to seek bail, which would be reflected in a
dispropor-tionate number of arrests. Understandably, no one is claiming
responsibility for commissioning this census of those arrested for violating
prohibition. Both the chief minister’s office and police officials have denied
knowledge of it, preferring to classify it as “unofficial”. The nanny state,
which ventured upon an ill-conceived policy with a poor success rate, could not
even keep its focus right.

But whatever its
status within the administrative system, the survey has had the effect of
revealing that history is repeating itself: Prohibition is visiting pain on the
very people it was supposed to help, the poorest, most disempowered sections of
society. The promise of easy pickings among consumers appears to be diverting
the attention of the enforcement machinery from suppliers, though politicians
and officials must know that the key intervention of prohibition is to turn off
the tap, rather than to punish a thirsty public. For the Nitish Kumar
government, to continue to launch punitive actions principally on consumers,
simply because it is easier, would only generate more embarrassing data.